Investment (open for
growth) peer challenge
East Sussex councils
10 – 14 March 2014
alice.lester@idea.gov.uk
www.pas.gov.uk
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The team
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Nick Hodgson, former Chief Executive, Derbyshire County Council
Councillor Spencer Flower, Leader of Dorset County Council
Councillor Ric Pallister, Leader of South Somerset District Council
Councillor Graham Chapman, Deputy Leader, Nottingham City Council
Daniel Mouawad, Chief Executive, South East Midlands Local Enterprise
Partnership
Richard Alderton, Head of Planning and Development, Ashford Borough
Council
Fiona McDiarmid, Assistant Director of Economic Development and
Strategy, Norfolk County Council
Joe Keech, Chief Planner Devon County Council
Phillipa Silcock and Richard Crawley, Principal Advisers, Planning
Advisory Service
Andrew Winfield and Gill Elliott, LGA Peer Challenge Managers
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The process
• We have spent time at East Sussex councils at the invitation of
the councils as ‘critical friends’
• The peer challenge is based on Planning Advisory Service high
level challenge themes plus the specific areas we were asked to
look at
• We familiarised ourselves with the councils’ context through the
position statement, the spatial review and on-site interviews and
focus groups
• We have been made welcome and appreciate people having
been open and honest
• What you hear is what we have read, been told and seen
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Our strategic themes
• Ambition and corporate and political leadership
• Strategic planning and partnership working
• Promotion of economic growth and supporting
businesses
• The role of planning in economic growth
• Housing and infrastructure needs
• Educating and training for skills for the current and
future economy
• Procurement
• Outcomes
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Ambition and corporate
and political leadership - strengths
• Strong sense of ambition supported by committed leadership
(despite political complexities) and examples of brave decisions
• Good understanding of the issues hindering growth across the
partners
• Ambition and commitment underpinned by good working
relationships at both Member and Officer levels and between
authorities
• ED services are being safeguarded although relatively small
given potential of East Sussex to create growth
• Team East Sussex (TES) helping and Chief Executives’ Group
working well - even more potential
• East Sussex (ES) relatively small county which is capable
of mobilising quickly behind growth initiatives
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Ambition and corporate and political
leadership – challenges and opportunities
• Appears to be a ‘project to project’ working approach
rather than a strategic outlook across ES
• A collectively owned ES growth strategy with a limited
number of deliverable and time-limited priorities, would
help focus activity, pace, and resources – not a long
‘wishes and wants’ list
• An expanded TES role, involving key private/public
sector players, could be an executive driving force for
the growth agenda
• Leaders and Chief Executives group could be a forum to
coordinate public sector input into the growth
strategy
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Ambition and corporate and political
leadership – challenges and opportunities
• Will need to take tough decisions on ES strategic growth
priorities and their delivery
• Spread ambition, enthusiasm and involvement within
public/private/third sectors, harnessing local media
behind the initiatives/growth agenda
• Need to be more pro-active and less risk-averse in
realising growth opportunities, building on the good
examples that already exist, sharing expertise and
spreading good practice across ES
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Strategic planning and partnership
- strengths
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On a strategic level there is sign-up for acting together and
sharing benefits of ED initiatives and projects
Effective management of the relationship has resulted in ES
“punching above its weight” with the LEP in terms of securing
resources
Senior management increasingly aware of the social value of
working in partnership with the voluntary sector
Good level of buy-in from councils to joint commissioning for
services (e.g. Locate East Sussex and procurement hub)
Effective inclusive model for driving programme work where
there are common interests - Hastings and Rother Task Force
SPACES a comprehensive vehicle for securing wide-ranging
economic goals - service efficiency, community support,
local spending, customer needs
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Strategic planning and partnership
- challenges and opportunities
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Federated structure of the LEP - need to maintain readiness to
promote ES strategic delivery projects in the new funding
allocations
The ES economic strategy should build on the SEP submission –
avoid any loss momentum on proactive work while these emerge
Benefit in checking if partnerships and strategies are fit for
purpose
Need to develop new partnership governance to encourage and
enable working with social enterprise and community agencies
Look for opportunities to drive up performance through sharing
resources, skills and best practice across councils and others
All councils get behind TES even if it means being bold and
accepting some short-term sacrifices in the interests of
long-term gain
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Promotion of economic growth and
supporting businesses - strengths
• “Ahead of the pack” and “punching above your weight” in
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the largest LEP in the country e.g. use of GPF
Excellent delivery vehicle in Sea Change – lengthy
pipeline of investment sites and clear leverage model
TES well regarded under federated model
Examples of good joint working across councils e.g.
SPACES, Locate East Sussex
Locate East Sussex working up ‘the offer’, though early
days e.g. investments not tracked or benchmarked.
Joint ventures across public and private sector – Arndale
expansion, Innovation Mall, Jerwood Gallery, North
Street Lewes, Elva Centre
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Promotion of economic growth and supporting
businesses – challenges and opportunities
• The strategic relationship between East Sussex and
Brighton and Hove and other neighbours is not clear
• Difficult to identify an agreed single set of priorities to
deliver economic growth across East Sussex
• Businesses perceive some local authorities as difficult
to access, and responses/support are too variable
• No collective understanding of the existing or potential
business/niche clusters and how to grow them
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Promotion of economic growth and supporting
businesses – challenges and opportunities
• Strategic economic coherence unclear - lots of
great projects/initiatives but do they align with
priorities to deliver economic growth?
• No consistent ‘narrative’ about East Sussex –
undermines selling proposition to businesses
• Insufficient growth market focus - concentration
on deprivation and public funded regeneration
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Planning - strengths
• Good progress in developing the Local Plan framework for the
ES area
• Evidence of working together – and a realisation of the
importance of cooperation, for example:
o Strategic Planning Members’ Group is major step forward
and should provide a sound basis for future policy
development
o There is an emerging joined up approach to infrastructure
planning and effective Infrastructure Delivery Plan (IDP)
development
o Specific evidence of where the planning system has
responded rapidly to secure delivery of a major project e.g.
Newhaven Port supporting the Wind Farm
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Planning – challenges and opportunities
• By its nature plan-making process is slow the submission
of the SEP should be a catalyst for developing a more
joined-up approach to housing and economic planning
• The Duty to Cooperate will become even more important
and needs both resourcing and strong political partnership
• Growth has sometimes been seen as a problem by some
members and officers. Need to develop ownership of a
joined up approach to housing and economic
development
• Plans are often driven by the response to housing need
but housing provision needs to be linked more clearly to
economic growth objectives
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Planning – challenges and opportunities
• Development management variable across
county – opportunity to set a quality standard
for all aspects of performance (e.g. pre-app
advice; early member involvement; clarity
early on s106; monitor performance on
business applications)
• Creative approaches needed to protect
valuable employment allocations (e.g. site
purchase and joint development)
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Housing - strengths
• ES Housing Group - good practice coordinating housing related
support with RSLs and includes ESCC Children’s and Adults’
services
• Enhanced delivery through good local work being conducted by
councils to address housing priorities e.g. joint funding
(Hastings), joint venture (Eastbourne), key site development
(Lewes)
• Good work being done to address housing market failure –
imbalance of private sector housing and the quality of this stock
e.g. Seven Streets, St Leonards
• Effective working relationships with private sector landlords to
improve housing standards and enable homelessness
discharge into the private sector
• Schemes developed as a key to levering external finance
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Housing - challenges and opportunities
• A coherent, shared vision and understanding of housing as an
economic generator across ES is not yet being articulated
• Consider mechanisms to convert land or capital into an income
stream and meet social need
• Housing can drive Local Plans. The challenge is to get the
balance between housing provision and economic growth
• Work across boundaries to scale up joint venture and other
opportunities to ensure scheme viability
• Recognise the market for addressing housing needs for older
people to deliver social benefit and priorities and gain a ROI
• Consider a shared commercial Valuer to advise councils on
development viability. Important for evaluating proposed
development
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Infrastructure - strengths
• Joint IDP approach will provide consistency, link to funding
streams and through to delivery
• Recognition of the importance of having ‘shovel ready’
schemes in the event of SELEP programme slippage
• Some smaller scale schemes are delivering big benefits but this
is not common across the county
• High speed broadband programme secured
• An agreed view on realistic priority transport needs established
through the LEP bid
• Newhaven Port is an example of strong partnership and
political working, similarly the Bexhill link road
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Infrastructure – challenges
and opportunities
• Clear focus on 3 main transport items but is there an
alternative strategy if some or all do not go ahead?
• Economic growth should be a key priority in deciding
on infrastructure investment
• Work still needed to stimulate take up of high speed
broadband and address ‘not spots’
• Councils need to carefully review how they integrate
economic development into their transport, housing,
planning functions
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Educating and training for skills
- strengths
• ESCC is drafting a county-wide skills and training strategy
which recognises many of the problems. Important to share
and consult with partners
• Some councils are set to increase their intake of apprentices,
matched by an increase also in the private sector
• The University of Brighton will be expanding its intake from 800
to 2,000 students and specialising in a number of high tech.
disciplines
• Sussex Coastal College is aligning a number of courses to local
job demand e.g. vacuum technology
• There are two employment hubs developing - Own Grown
and the Eastbourne Employability Hub
• Connexions 360 website is a helpful tool
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Educating and training for skills – challenges
and opportunities
• As in many places, coordination of services is poor.
“Lots of avenues, no real coordination between the
avenues”; “lots of strategy, so little delivery”
• Too many NEETS, both 16-18 and 19-24, are falling
through the net
• Lack of pre-apprenticeship 'work ready' training both in
and out of school
• The curricula of schools and some further education
organisations still too demand and funding-led
• Not enough emphasis on nurturing
entrepreneurial skills
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Educating and training for skills –
challenges and opportunities
• Lack of large employers to drive systematic business
engagement with the education and skills sector; small
organisations need help to make links
• Some councils appear not to be making the most of
procurement and planning agreements to secure local
jobs and training
• Mechanisms for capturing local jobs from development
opportunities are not systematically in place
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Procurement - strengths
• Inclusion of procurement as an essential part of the
growth strategy commendable. Some excellent
procurement initiatives supporting the growth agenda
• The Procurement Hub and Procurement Portal
provide a good basis for greater public /private/
independent sector partnership working
• Good practice: SPACES initiative’s asset
management and contract alignment; ‘Build East
Sussex’ supply chain management; the TRAC
apprenticeship initiative
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Procurement – challenges
and opportunities
• Focus procurement activities where they will have the most
chances of success in supporting local businesses rather than
just chasing overall targets
• Involve more public/private/ independent sector partners in the
procurement initiatives. Many expressed a willingness and just
a 1% increase in local spend will have a major impact
• Do more to harness local spending power by
coordinating/amalgamating partner procurement to support
local suppliers and get better deals
• Standardise procurement requirements through the
Procurement Hub – procedures and rules, thresholds,
insurance requirements, contract packages and a ‘tell us
once’ approach to make it easier for SMEs to do business
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Procurement – challenges
and opportunities
• Better coordinate the provision of procurement training and
support for local SMEs to improve accessibility and make the
best use of the available resources
• Create an East Sussex part of the joint procurement portal to
make it more relevant to local purchasers and suppliers
• TES partnership to do more to lever apprenticeships from
procurement activities. Lead by example setting a realistic but
challenging target that all can get behind
• Ensure that all public/private/independent sector partners have
reviewed their procurement processes and regulations to make
it as easy as possible for SMEs to do business
• Ensure the procurement plan(s) contributes to and
influences local training plans
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Outcomes
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Attracted greater share of funding via LEP
Bexhill/Hastings link road is delivering strategic sites
Housing delivery and stock improvement
ESCC resources are creating apprenticeships and
training
• Universities are contributing to the economy and this
is to increase
• Good work conducted with ES Local Forecasting
Model and economic impact models – this will be
important in the future to evaluate the benefits of
growth investment
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Outcomes
• Outcomes are notoriously difficult to define and
capture. In common with many other areas ED in ES
is predominantly initiative and some areas output
based
• The prioritised ES growth strategy needs to be based
on key milestones and measurable outcomes
• TES would need to regularly monitor strategy delivery
and outcome achievement
• An effective performance and evaluation system will
need to be further developed
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Recommendations for leadership
• Use the emerging consensus around the SEP, and
a revised ES economic strategy, as a catalyst for driving
forward the next round of local plans
• Raise the standards and improve the consistency of
‘open for growth’ services
• Create a coherent, shared vision and understanding of
housing as an economic generator across the whole
county linked to the economic growth strategy
• Focus on a small number of infrastructure projects which
are essential to the delivery of economic growth
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Recommendations for TES
• Develop TES as the partnership vehicle for the ES
growth strategy and delivery in the federated
structure of the LEP
– at a new level of maturity based on openness and trust
between the partners
– involve key public/private/third sector players as an
executive driving force for the growth agenda
– create the ES ‘narrative’ which sets out an agreed vision of
the future and mechanisms to deliver
– Create a collectively owned ES growth strategy with a
limited number of deliverable and time limited priorities to
focus activity, progress at pace and prioritise resources
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Recommendations on partnership
Look for partners. None of you can do it on your own
– Governance to enable social enterprise and community
agencies to deliver social value and economic growth
– Stretch ambition and trust by combining resources to
improve business access to services
– Map then build support around clusters/niches and groups
of interest. Continue to work together where there are good
reasons for working in this way
– Help each other with the hard choices from the Duty and
facing up to priorities
– Collective branding for ES will be essential. Signpost.
– Work together to establish a more positive proactive
approach to the delivery of the planning system in ES
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Recommendations on being business
focused
• Focus procurement activities where they will have the
most chances of success in supporting local businesses
rather than chasing overall targets
• Involve more public/ private/3rd sector partners in the
procurement initiatives to harness local buying power,
increase local spend and lever more apprenticeships
• Tourism and culture need to be recognised as important
elements for growth
• Be ambitious for and better resource Locate East
Sussex
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ES is poised to accelerate growth but this
needs collective vision driven relentlessly
from the top to deliver.
More of the same won’t do it.
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Next steps
• Draft report
• Chance for you to comment on the report
• Final report agreed
• Action planning workshop
• Identification of any further support PAS/LGA
available
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Thanks for listening. Any
questions?
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